CNN reporter Brian Stelter claimed Monday that ABC News settled a defamation suit by President-elect Donald Trump to avoid “public embarrassment” that could stem from discovery.
Trump sued ABC on March 19 for defamation over comments made by “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, who claimed during an episode of the Sunday morning talk show that Trump was found liable for rape. Stelter called the settlement, in which ABC paid Trump $15 million, a “major victory” for the president-elect.
“These cases oftentimes do not work out for Trump. But this ABC case is a major victory. I talked to renowned First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams last night. He said, look, there’s no way to say other than this is a big win for Trump,” Stelter told “CNN Newsroom” host Jim Acosta. “It’s going to embolden him to file more of these suits. But as Abrams said, he called it disturbing that this could turn, $15 million could be paid around the use of the word rape versus sexual abuse in that interview on ABC’s ‘This Week.’”
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“Look, Stephanopoulos has been a Trump target for a long time. He was very aggressive in this interview that aired in March,” Stelter continued. “So Trump decided to file suit about a week later, and a judge did not throw it out. A judge let it go forward through the discovery process.”
While hounding Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina over her support for Trump during the contentious interview, Stephanopoulos brought up her history as a rape survivor while bringing up the $83 million judgement against Trump in a civil defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who Mace criticized for joking about going on a shopping spree with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Mace discussed her rape during a 2019 debate in the South Carolina state legislature over a “heartbeat” bill that limited access to abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, according to the Post and Courier.
“It’s possible that ABC decided to settle this, Jim, because there might have been embarrassing emails or text messages on ABC’s servers that were going to become public,” Stelter told Acosta. “Everybody remembers that’s what happened to Fox News when Dominion sued Fox.”
“So this might have been a case where ABC is avoiding public embarrassment by paying $15 million,” Stelter continued. “But look, there’s a lot of people that say that payment is embarrassing as well. So this is not the end of the story.”
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